2021

The events will line up with the events from the 2019-2020 season because of the cancellation of the 2020 National Tournament and the replay of the 2019-2020 events. While the events are the same, the rules will be different.

Along with the original 23 events that will be held, there will be 10 events that will be trial events. These events are events that the NSO need more information and feedback for.

Contents

Discussion over Event Replay

On the night when the 2020 National Tournament was cancelled, the Science Olympiad Alumni Network announced that Science Olympiad would "replay the 2020 Rules next year," suggesting to "keep your resources and devices." This prompted a significant debate (generally found in this forum thread), with some arguing that the event replay should occur and others arguing that it should not occur.

chalker, the National Physical Science Rules Committee Chair, first clarified in the thread that "while all the events will stay the same, there will likely be a few tweaks to some of the rules, particularly to address any rules clarification or FAQs that have come up this year," suggesting that slight rule changes were possible, although the rules changes were likely to be minimal so that this years' devices could be used to their greatest extent. Perspectives arguing for no replay generally said their reasons were that a replay may make the competition too boring, a replay would allow top teams to spend excessive amounts of time fine tuning their devices (causing score differences to become much smaller), and that replaying the events will cause some (specifically, those who will be in their last years of Division C or Division B in the 2021 season). Perspectives arguing for a replay commonly noted that no replay would not cause students to waste their devices and would allow tournament directors/event supervisors to remain in their positions and avoid wasting materials.